Blackstone Publishing
The Secret World: A History of Intelligence
Key Metrics
- Christopher Andrew
- Blackstone Publishing
- Audio
- 9781982527693
- -
- -
- Political Science > Intelligence & Espionage
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
The history of espionage is far older than any of today's intelligence agencies, yet the long history of intelligence operations has been largely forgotten. The codebreakers at Bletchley Park, the most successful World War II intelligence agency, were completely unaware that their predecessors in earlier moments of national crisis had broken the codes of Napoleon during the Napoleonic wars and those of Spain before the Spanish Armada.
Those who do not understand past mistakes are likely to repeat them. Intelligence is a prime example. At the outbreak of World War I, the grasp of intelligence shown by US President Woodrow Wilson and British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith was not in the same class as that of George Washington during the Revolutionary War and leading eighteenth-century British statesmen.
In this book, distinguished historian Christopher Andrew recovers much of the lost intelligence history of the past three millennia-and shows its relevance today.
Author Bio
Professor Christopher Andrew is a Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University, teaching European history and international relations since the French Revolution. His research interests are Twentieth-century political history and international relations with particular reference to the role and influence of intelligence agencies.
Professor Andrew rose to prominence with his books on the KGB, most notably KGB: The Inside Story of its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (1990) and The Mitrokhin Archive. Vol.1: The KGB in Europe and the West (1999), written in collaboration with former KGB officers Oleg Gordievsky and Vasili Mitrokhin respectively.
Owning to his expertise in the history of security and intelligence agencies, Professor Andrew was commissioned by the Security Service (MI5) to write the first authorized history of the Service, to mark its centenary in 2009.
To conduct his research for the book, Professor Andrew was given exclusive access to the Service's records and files. Defense of the Realm (2009) was very well received.
Professor Andrew is the Former Chairman of the Faculty of History, and in December 2010 he stepped down as President of Corpus Christi College.
Source: University of Cambridge
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